Only one in three traders are aware of all regulatory rules associated with their trading activity, according to a Thomson Reuters poll.

With traders and front office professionals struggling to keep up with all of the new regulations and compliance rules, Thomson Reuters has launched Eikon for Compliance Management, a version of the Eikon desktop dedicated to trading floor compliance.

Eikon for Compliance Management can help streamline compliance workflows and provide simultaneous access to regulatory and market content, according to Thomson Reuters. The offering combines Thomson Reuters global regulatory intelligence with Eikon's market data, news and analytics, to facilitate auditable compliance communication with the front office.

A Thomson Reuters poll covering over 250 compliance managers and traders revealed that while the front office approach to compliance is generally constructive, there are still significant gaps in regulatory changes filtering through to and being translated by the trading floor. Of the traders polled, just under a third (31 percent) of respondents was aware of all the regulatory rules associated with their activity at any given time. Coupled with this, only 33 percent of traders reported receiving training related to compliance issues within the past three months. Additionally, only 56 percent of compliance managers questioned believed that traders have easy access to internal policy documents.

Financial firms globally are being hit by an overwhelming number of regulatory obligations; thousands of regulatory changes are published each year. The increased frequency of rule changes and the intensity of investigations by regulators mean that financial traders and compliance teams alike must know exactly when a change in regulation will impact their internal policies and procedures. Additionally, financial firms must also be able to manage and communicate those changes to front office staff and track how they are implemented.

"If the financial crisis has taught us anything it's that the culture of compliance needs to be embedded right at the trader's workstation," said David Craig, president, Financial & Risk, Thomson Reuters in a press release. "The effective flow of regulatory information to the trading floor helps protect firms from the risk of sanction and enforcement and helps demonstrate to the regulatory authorities that compliance is front of mind across the organization. Enabling this through the core trading workstation and in the context of the financial market in an intelligent way, makes it easier, simpler and reduces resistance to compliance."

Thomson Reuters provides daily regulatory intelligence, from more than 230 regulators and exchanges around the world, which can be deployed within an organization to manage the lifecycle of the compliance process from notification of a new regulation, through responding to regulatory audits. Thomson Reuters Eikon is a solution for consuming real-time data and executing financial markets transactions across asset classes such as foreign exchange, fixed income, commodities, equities and derivatives.

Thomson Reuters Eikon for Compliance Management addresses the problems faced by organizations in interpreting and communicating regulatory change and its impact across the front, middle and back office. Compliance managers are able to perform market and company data research as part of their surveillance or audit investigations, and can manage compliance manuals through a customizable workflow tool, according to Thomson Reuters. The array of compliance policy workflow, eLearning and surveillance add-on applications mean that policy changes and compliance training can be distributed to front office staff and the confirmation of adoption of those changes can be tracked to maintain a complete audit trail for regulators. Additionally, traders can keep abreast of regulatory change and the potential impact of regulation on their trading activities.

"In 2011, approximately 60 regulatory announcements per working day were made across financial services regulators globally and this figure will only keep rising," said Craig. "With the severe enforcement action and penalties for non-compliance being focused more and more on senior individuals within firms, the need for firms to be compliant across their entire trade lifecycle has never been greater."
Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio